It also uses the fact that the IPFS cache is also used to deliver content to others, similar to the way Bittorrent allows downloading and uploading based on blocks of content.
There still has to be someone hosting it initially to spread. But even that can be done over Tor, given the patches from OpenBazaar and IPFS.
Then host it in one of the non-compliant countries, no need for IPFS.
By viewing some of these IPFS links higher up in the thread am I "distributing" their contents in the eyes of the law?
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/04/04/472...
> Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb says the department understands how Tor relays work, and they knew Robinson was a Tor host.
> "Knowing that, moving in, it doesn't automatically preclude the idea that the people running Tor are not also involved in child porn," Whitcomb says. "It does offer a plausible alibi, but it's still something that we need to check out."
https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/replication-on-ipfs-or-the-backing...
I think this opens up an issue of copyright, there are several public IPFS Gateways available on via HTTP. If you host a bad file, you can essentially pull it through any of these public IPFS Gateways to create other seeders for your file.
Keep in mind, there is no guarantee to how long those seeders will have the file, but they do become seeders for your file for some amount of time, at least until they clear their cache or other files need the space and prune your file.
This is one reason I stopped running an IPFS Gateway. You don't have to look very hard to find copyrighted material being served via IPFS.